China's Tungsten Grip Draws War-Risk Warning With November Export Review in View
China controls 80% of tungsten mining, there is no futures market to price stress, and suspended export controls are set to expire in November 2026.
A Bloomberg Odd Lots segment titled "The Tungsten Market Is Warning of an Upcoming War" drew attention to a peculiarity shared by few commodities of strategic importance: there is no futures contract for tungsten. The market has no clearing price, no open interest, no visible forward curve through which geopolitical stress normally registers.5
The International Energy Agency said on Thursday (2026-07-16) that threats to critical mineral supply security had emerged in recent months as China curbed exports of certain rare earth elements. China mines approximately 80% of the world's tungsten and refines 99% of its gallium, according to the Economist, figures that place it in a category of supply concentration beyond almost any other traded material.4,1
What gives the current moment a specific calendar dimension is a detail in the IEA's assessment: expanded export controls have been suspended only until November 2026. If Beijing reinstates them in full, the IEA estimated that around $6.5 trillion per year of downstream production outside China could be affected across the relevant supply chains. A complete disruption of battery-grade graphite trade alone, the agency added, would put more than $300 billion per year of external production at risk.4
Beijing has already demonstrated willingness to use mineral access to apply diplomatic pressure. China halted exports of several heavy rare earths and gallium to Japan from December (2025), Japan NRG reported, citing Chinese customs data. The action raised concerns among Japanese officials and industry that Beijing views critical mineral supply chains as leverage in a broader contest over Taiwan.3
The Economist described Xi Jinping's approach as deploying an "assassin's mace" — weaponising supply chains while calculating that the economic blowback falls well short of the damage inflicted on targeted economies. But that calculation rests partly on consuming nations being slow to organise credible alternatives. The evidence so far supports it.2
Mitsubishi Materials announced plans to invest ¥10 billion in tungsten production and recycling capacity in Japan and Europe, one of the larger corporate responses to China's tightening controls.3 By 2029, output at the company's German subsidiary H.C. Starck is projected to rise 40% to 7,000 tons per year, while Japan New Metals' Akita facility is set to double production to 2,400 tons per year.3 A recent acquisition expanded the Mitsubishi group's total tungsten supply capacity to approximately 15,000 tons annually, roughly six times its prior level.3
Yet 15,000 tons from one corporate group's global footprint is a long distance from displacing the dependency that 80% supply concentration implies.
The absence of a futures mechanism shapes what is knowable about tungsten in ways that do not apply to copper or crude oil. Those markets generate real-time signals when end-users start paying a premium for supply security. Tungsten leaves analysts reading export-licence filings and customs-flow data instead.5 In a market where the dominant supplier is also a geopolitical adversary for the largest consuming economies, that information deficit makes supply-chain stress harder to detect, hedge or price until a disruption is already under way.
November 2026 is the operative date. Whether China reinstates the suspended controls or extends the pause will shape how aggressively manufacturers in aerospace, defence and industrial tooling move to reduce their Chinese exposure. Mitsubishi's ¥10 billion commitment and plans to bring H.C. Starck output to 7,000 tons look measured against the $6.5 trillion downstream exposure figure the IEA put on the table on Thursday (2026-07-16). That gap has not closed.4,3